The Girl Who Counted
by Natalie River
Summary: Amy Pond might have been the girl who waited. But Molly Hooper isn't waiting for her madman to come back, he's right there beside her at stupid hours of the morning demanding access to bodies while holding a riding crop. She dreams of stars and flying through space in his time machine. As Sherlock's mind palace starts to break soon her dreams will come true again. AU. Sherlolly.


Molly sometimes wished she could walk away from Sherlock Holmes.

She liked working at Bart's, she'd been there as long as Sherlock had frequented the place and both had become part of the scenery. In fact other patrons of the morgue would find it odd to think of her working there without Sherlock loitering around and vice versa.

It would be so easy, to tell him to bugger off, she'd be justified in it too. It seemed that it had been decades since she'd been an _important _part of the man's life. Of course she still was, but he didn't seem to realise it.

Taking a deep breath and exhaling she let her thoughts drift away. It was a Sunday, she was meant to have a day off. But bloody Sherlock Holmes wanted access to a body and of course Dr. Hooper was the only person willing to work with him at an ungodly hour on the Sabbath day.

Molly straightened her lab-coat and checked her reflection in her pocket mirror. It seemed more and more often that Sherlock called her John instead of Molly. The two had become awfully close as of late. Molly could see clearly that the man was absolutely smitten with him, and Sherlock Holmes was noticing John more and more while noticing her less and less.

But Molly knew. Sherlock Holmes was a lie.

Ironically he was late, really, he'd called her in, practically spitting excitement down the phone line at her, yet he wasn't even here yet. Wiping away a few tears that threatened to ruin her mascara she smiled to herself. She had a routine that she followed whenever a day with Sherlock got too stressful. She went home and listened to old recordings he'd given her full of instructions that she'd memorised long ago. She'd listen just to hear his voice, his beautiful voice, speaking to her as if she were a real person not a slave.

She liked listening to the end of the messages best because he said the words he never said any more. _Thank you. _

Of course Molly had tried dating. Tried and failed. Perhaps she'd been spoiled for good, because she kept looking for gods amongst men, not finding any, and settling for evil masterminds who tried to kill the man she'd vowed to protect.

It seemed years ago, when they'd come to London together, to hide in plain sight. Trusting only two others with their secret. An old friend and a complete stranger. The Doctor had agreed to help them immediately, with his silly scarf and his hat. He joked that Sherlock had nicked the idea from him, seeing how handsome he looked in a scarf. Mycroft Holmes took a little more convincing, he'd met the Doctor, age eight, and had been finally allowed to join UNIT at seventeen having applied every year since he turned twelve.

He left UNIT before he turned twenty one, stating he could use his abilities to protect the people of earth in a more practical way as a solo agent. That and they were all a bunch of imbeciles.

Molly admired Holmes, a clever, clever man. Every month Molly went with him to visit his younger brother's grave. Sherlock Holmes, died age four. It took Molly three months to realise that he died in the year that Mycroft met the Doctor. It took her fifteen minutes to realise the two were probably connected.

Holmes hadn't recognised the Doctor immediately or recognise the descriptions of his past selves he gave, which gave Molly a little hope, because that meant that there were more than one future regenerations out there.

They were drinking coffee together when Mycroft began to ask questions about the Doctor, it was then that Molly realised Mycroft didn't blame him. Apparently the Doctor he'd met had worn a dark brown pinstriped suit and a trench coat and had been considerably younger than Molly could ever imagine her Doctor. And he'd been sad, so sad. Even at the age of eight Mycroft had been able to read people, and Molly listened to his deductions with fear.

From that point onwards they realised that talking about such things could possibly screw up the timelines and so they didn't. Especially since she hadn't heard of the Timewar but Mycroft Holmes obviously had from overhearing a whispered conversation _his _Doctor had had with a dark skinned woman who'd asked about the other Timelords.

The decision of no more spoilers was sensible, considering she still had to keep a log in her phone of the meetings she and Sherlock had had with various Doctors. So far they'd met three, _our _Doctor, as Molly called Scarfy, Grandad- his first form, and his second regeneration. She wished he'd just tell them which face he was on each time, it'd be so much easier to keep track.

Chuckling to herself she thought it'd be a funny bingo game, _I've met one, two and number eight but I haven't got all twelve yet. _She doubted the Doctor would stop at twelve though, if anyone could cheat death, he would. Maybe not intentionally, for immorality was the curse of the Timelords, but he'd do it. The world _needed _heroes.

Still he went through regenerations as if they were candy, most Timelords considered seven hundred and fifty years middle age for regeneration. The Doctor kept _breaking _his bodies. So did _her _Timelord.

"All lives come to an end Molly," Mycroft had said slowly, stirring his coffee instead of drinking it. "The Doctor couldn't save everyone. What's...what's he like?"

"The Doctor?" she'd asked, cutting off a segment of cake with her fork.

Mycroft had shaken his head. "No. Your Doctor."

Molly had laughed. "They're not all called Doctors, you do realise that right?"

Then the British Government had started to shake and suddenly they were both laughing for no true reason until tears were in their eyes and their stomachs hurt. Of course he knew that they were Timelords and that names were a strange thing in Gallifreyan logic.

"His real name? Damned if I know, but the name he chose for himself? Benedict," she sighed. "And he does the same type of thing when he's in Timelord form."

"Insults people who care about him, announces he's bored and acts upon impulsive and his addictive personality?" Mycroft smirked. "Did he take drugs in space?"

"Yes, but not any more," she shot back. "And he solves crimes and saves lives."

That was the day her friendship with Mycroft Holmes truly started.

Pulling herself back to the present she yawned as Sherlock span into the morgue.

"I can't sleep," he announced.

She stared at him in dismay her mouth opening and shutting as she searched for appropriate words to voice her feelings in a sentence that didn't end with "uck". "I thought you wanted me to help you with a case."

"Don't do that with your mouth Molly," Sherlock snapped lifting his chin. "It makes you look like a goldfish and isn't at all flattering."

Molly counted to ten in her head, thinking about his TARDIS back at her flat, disguised as a wardrobe. Mycroft had voiced his belief that it was meant to look like a police-box, to which she'd explained that that was only the Doctor's seeing as his was _broken _and he refused to get it fixed. Molly had promised him that Ben would take him for a spin in it as soon as he took his Gallifreyan form once more.

"Fascinating, did he steal it too?" Mycroft enquired, his fingers stroking the control panels.

"No," Molly replied as she patted the main beam gently. "He won it in a...well it's sort of like boxing. They thought he cheated, no Timetravel or technology use allowed see. And the one he beat was thrice his size. Didn't cheat though, just deduced."

"What's wrong Sherlock?" she asked quietly turning to the paperwork she'd been pretending to do so she didn't look sad before he came in.

"I'm fine," he began. "I...I can't sleep. I can't think. My mind palace is malfunctioning. And I keep...I keep remembering things and knowing things I couldn't know. Ever since, ever since the Christmas party. Sometimes I think it was the drugs, but I remember...I remember terrible creatures and you and...Molly I'm losing my mind."

She stared up at him trying to think of a way to continue. "And...I think it's time. What does that even mean Molly?"

His voice was breaking, his personality disintegrating into the man she knew. "Sherlock, how do you know it's time?"

"Bad Wolf needs to get a message to the Doctor to take him somewhere and it's Doctor Who? In my head constantly, they keep asking and they want to ask him but they can't find him. And Clara's trying to..." he clutched his head. "There's a woman, she met us once, it's why you have spoilers on your phone. _Spoilers Sweetie, _she's...married to him...but we haven't met him yet. He hasn't met her yet," he rocked on his heels.

"And Moriarty," he shook his head shuddering and gripping his face suddenly. "What do I do Molly? You were right, I'm not ok."

Sweat glistened on his forehead as he began to pace running his hands through his hair, shaking almost. She'd only seen him like this once before, after a danger night, on a comedown. She'd slapped him so hard across the face. Drugs existed on Gallifrey, of course they did, and they existed on earth in 2014 too.

That was the year before she'd met Ben, and the year her little sister and last family member alive had died. So she'd dropped out of university, getting her doctorate in human and Aisarian pathology on Aizarius. Unfortunately twenty first century earth didn't accept qualifications from planets they'd never heard of so psychic paper had come in incredibly handy. It was a gift from Ben on her twenty first birthday and she was pretty sure it messed her around intentionally. Once when they were in a bar in Brazil (the planet) it had declared her a stripper and she'd received free drinks from several males and females for a while after that. Ben assured her it was just showing what the man expected to see. Which didn't reassure her at all.

"They think I'm a fraud Molly, and I'm going mad," he bit down on his lip and threw his head back. "Can you hear the drums Molly? My home...gone, all gone. Who's this Doctor? Why are all the questions about him, all the messages to him? Do I not count? Hero, they say I'm a hero, but I'm not. Is my mind showing me how I see John? Is my mind creating this Doctor to be him?" he let out a cry of despair and kicked a locker. "I can't deduce, I can't _see!"_

Molly rushed to his side, her brow crinkling. She grabbed his hands before he could slam his fists into the lockers and disturb the dead more than he was doing already. He let his head fall forwards, colliding with the cold metal. "What's wrong with me?"

"What if," Molly started, "what if Sherlock Holmes isn't real? If someone else was in a lot of trouble and he...he needed to escape, he needed to die. He's a hero, he's like the Doctor, but people don't remember him. He, needs to escape so he hides in plain sight. He hides inside himself, but why do witness protection programmes fail Sherlock?"

Sherlock slid down to the floor bringing his knees up to his chest. "I...I can't..."

Molly crouched with him. "Sherlock?" she prompted.

"Because people contact loved ones, they get bored, they...because if you're hiding, you know where you are. So you hide, you hide from everywhere and yourself," he whispered, deep eyes meeting hers.

"Yeah," Molly nodded, tears brimming in her eyes. "You forgot everything. You became Sherlock Holmes," she rubbed his back gently. "But really you're a- you're an amazing man called Ben," she shuddered gulping. Reaching inside her blouse she undid the clasp of the simple chain she wore around her neck and unhooked a fobwatch from it.

The weight of it had been physical and mental, she was almost glad that she finally could stop baring it.

"But I'll die, won't I?" he asked looking up at her as if he were a child. "I'll die. Sherlock Holmes will stop existing and Ben will take his place. I'll forget John, I'll...I'm...I- Moriarty..."

"Moriarty's just human," she whispered kneeling. "We'll deal with him. But there are so many other Moriarty's, all over the universe. We need Ben, I need him."

"They do say death is the next great adventure," Sherlock murmured. He let his head fall back. "I'm scared," his voice came out not the low baritone of a grown man but the scared squeak of a child who just wanted his mother.

"We'll do it together," Molly promised, holding out the fobwatch.

Twenty minutes later the chameleon arch lay abandoned on the floor and the pair were still in a tight embrace on the floor. Half an hour later they were back at Molly's flat. It was barely inhabited seeing as she lived inside the TARDIS but it had the basic necessities for someone to assume she lived there.

Ben had raised his eyebrows when he'd met Toby. She snapped back she'd been lonely.

Two days later Jim Moriarty shot himself and Sherlock Holmes stepped off a roof.

Three years later Charles Augustus Magnussen tried to turn on Mycroft Holmes when he was warned about negotiating with slitheen and then warned even more about attempting to blackmail them. Ben was almost glad he didn't heed the warnings. But Ben was incredibly surprised when he tracked down Mycroft in 2017 and found him with notorious time agent Jack Harkness. Mycroft had been doing a lot with Torchwood since Sherlock's 'death'.

Ben announced he didn't think that they suited one another, but Molly personally thought he was just a little miffed that he hadn't been able to deduce it. Ben said aliens were much harder to deduce than humans, and technically you couldn't call Jack human any more. Secretly Ben was slightly concerned about the whole immortality thing, given that Jack would end up outliving his lover just as he would. But it didn't do to live in the future or the past even as a Timelord, both had to become the present.

Molly and Ben watched John playing with his two year old daughter as Mary prepared for a night out with her friends. Ben had miscalculated his timing and had informed John that he wasn't dead two years after the event instead of half an hour. But he'd still managed to attend the wedding and he'd still managed to be present at the christening.

Ben didn't know how he'd succeeded in missing the timewar, but he wished he'd been there, he'd helped. Guilt ravaged him. In the time he was off pretending to be human his entire planet had been destroyed. Caring wasn't an advantage.

He still refused to talk to the Doctor for a year until he found out that Gallifrey Falls No More. A phone call and an apology and a few tears were shed.

Clara and Molly didn't speak of that, they didn't speak of that to either of their madmen.

Molly knew she'd die before Ben did. She should have been dead several times over in the adventures they had had. Once or twice she'd made him promise that he'd find someone else if she died. Like the Doctor had his companions. He always promised, but just like Sherlock couldn't replace John, she wondered if he'd be able to replace her.

It was odd, that they shared their first kiss when Molly was thirty and Ben was seven hundred and twenty. Because they'd been together since she was nineteen and it just hadn't happened. Or at least Molly called herself thirty but really she wasn't sure how old she was any more. Every so often she and Ben decided it was her birthday and celebrated it.

They should have kissed on a bridge in Hyspero, its only moon hanging perfectly in the sky, streetlamps faintly illuminating them in the darkness. Or maybe in the flower fields off Zaakros. Somewhere exotic, somewhere beautiful. Instead it was in a dingy back alley behind a chip-shop on Therra.

They'd just solved a crime and saved a life. And somehow, Molly thought, it didn't get better than that.

_**AN: So tell me what you think? Do you like?**_


End file.
